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What Is Organic Chemistry About?
What Is Organic Chemistry About?
What Is Organic Chemistry About?
INTRODUCTION.
WHAT IS
ORGANIC CHEMISTRY
ALL ABOUT?
ou now are starting the study of organic chemistry, which is the chemistry
of compounds of carbon. In this introductory chapter, we will tell you something of the background and history of organic chemistry, something of the
problems and the rewards involved, and something of our philosophy of what
is important for you to learn so that you will have a reasonable working knowledge of the subject, whether you are just interested in chemistry or plan for a
career as a chemist, an engineer, a physician, a biologist, and so on. The subject
is very large; more than two million organic compounds have been isolated or
prepared and characterized, yet the number of guiding principles is relatively
small. You certainly will not learn everything about organic chemistry from
this book, but with a good knowledge of the guiding principles, you will be
able later to find out what you need to know either from the chemical literature,
or directly by experiment in the laboratory.
Unfortunately, learning about and learning how to use organic chemistry
is not a straightforward process, wherein one step leads to another in a simple,
logical way like Euclidean geometry. A more realistic analogy would be to
consider yourself thrust into and required to deal successfully with a sizable
group of strangers speaking a new and complex language. In such a situation,
one has to make many decisions- how much of the language to learn at the
outset? Which people are the best to interact with first? Which will be the most
important to know in the long run? How well does one have to know each
person? How much does one have to know about the history of the group to
understand their interactions? These are difficult questions, and a period of
confusion, if not anxiety, is expected in any attempt to complete a task of this
kind in a set, brief period of time. Clearly, it would be difficult to learn all at
once the language, the people, and the interactions between them. Nonetheless,
this is pretty much what is expected of you in learning organic chemistry.
A number of approaches have been devised to help you become familiar
with and use organic chemistry. In terms of our analogy, one way is to learn
the language, then the relationships between the people, and finally, well prepared, to proceed to interact with the people singly and then in groups. Such
an approach may be logical in concept, but is not to everyone's taste as a way
to learn. Many of us do better with an interactive approach, where language,
relationships, and people are worked out more or less in concert, with attendant misunderstandings and ambiguities.
What we will try to do is to introduce some of the important basic concepts and the elements of the language of organic chemistry, then show how
these are used in connection with various classes of compounds. The initial
round will be a fairly extensive one and you should not expect to be able to
master everything at once. This will take practice and we will provide opportunity for practice.
One of the appealing yet bothersome features of modern organic chemistry is its extraordinary vitality. Unlike Euclidean geometry or classical mechanics, it is evolving rapidly and many of the concepts introduced in this
book are either new or have been drastically modified in the past ten years.
Every issue of the current chemical journals has material of such basic interest
that one would like to include it in an introductory course. Truly, those who
write organic'textbooks write on water, with no hope of producing the definitive
book. Things just change too fast. Despite this, one of the great ideas of modern
civilization, namely that organic compounds can be described in terms of more
or less simple three-dimensional molecular structures with atoms held together
by chemical bonds, has persisted for more than one hundred years and seems
unlikely to be superseded, no matter how much it is refined and modified.
1 lntroduct~onWhat
IS
not accommodate the new facts that kept emerging. As is usual in human endeavors, espousal of new and better ideas did not come equally quickly to all
those used to thinking in particular ways. To illustrate, at least one famous
chemist, Berthelot, still used H O as the formula for water twenty-five years
after it seemed clear that H,O was a better choice.
1-1B Valence
If we assume that the molecule is held together by chemical bonds, without
knowing more, we could write numerous structures such as H-H-HH-H-C-C-Br,
H-C-Br-H-H-C-H-H,
and so on. However, if we also know of the existence of stable H,, but not H,; of stable Br,,
but not of Br,; and of stable CH,Br, CH,Br,, CHBr,, and CBr,, but not of
CH,Br, CHBr, CBr, and so on, a pattern of what is called valence emerges.
lWe will finesse here the long and important struggle of getting a truly self-consistent
table of atomic weights. If you are interested in the complex history of this problem
and the clear solution to it proposed by S. Cannizzaro in 1860, there are many accounts
available in books on the history of chemistry. One example is J. R. Partington, A
History of Chemistry, Vol. IV, Macmillan, London, 1964. Relative atomic weights
now are based on I2C = 12 (exactly).
It will be seen that the above formulas all are consistent if hydrogen atoms
and bromine atoms form just one bond (are univalent) while carbon atoms form
four bonds (are tetravalent). This may seem almost naively simple today, but
a considerable period of doubt and uncertainty preceded the acceptance of the
idea of definite valences for the elements that emerged about 1852.
I I
Br-C-C-H
I I
I I
H-C-C-H
I I
Br H
1 Introduction What
IS
Br-C-C-H
and
H-C-C-~r
Br H
as well as for
I I
H-C-C-H,
I I
H
I
H-C-C-H,
I I
and
Br H
Br
I I
H-C-C-H,
I I
H
H
Br
I I
H-C-C-H.
I I
There are, though, two of these structures that could be different from one
another, namely
H-6-C-~r
and
H-C-C-H
In the first of these, CH,- is located opposite the Br- and the H-'s on the
carbon with the Br also are opposite one another. In the second formula,
CM,- and Br- are located next to each other as are the H-'s on the same
carbon. We therefore have a problem as to whether these two different formulas also represent different compounds.
H-C-C-H
Br
and
Br-C-C-Br
Therefore, if we have two bottles, one containing one C,H,Br, isomer and one
the other and run the substitution test, the compound that gives only one
product is 6 and the one that gives a mixture of two products is 7. Further, it
will be seen that the test, besides telling which isomer is 6 and which is 7, establishes the structures of the two possible C,H3Br3 isomers, 8 and 9. Thus
only 8 can be formed from both of the different C,H,Br, isomers whereas 9 is
formed from only one of them.
H-C-C-H
HI
1
H-C-H
H-C-H
H-C-C-H
HI
1 88
H-C----C-C-H
I I I I
H-C-C-C-C-C-H
I I I I
I
I
Exercise 1-4 A gaseous compound of formula C,H, reacts with liquid bromine
(Br,) to give a single C,H,Br,
compound. The C,H4Br, so formed gives only one
C,H,Br3 substitution product. Deduce the structure of C,H4 and the bromo compounds
derived from it. (This was a key problem for the early organic chemists.)
H
Cac/H
H,C/
11
C
/ \
C
/ \
10
This concept was controversial, to say the least, mainly on two counts.
Benzene did not behave as expected, as judged by the behavior of other compounds with carbon-to-carbon double bonds and also because there should
be two different dibromo substitution products of benzene with the bromine
on adjacent carbons (11 and 12) but only one such compound could be isolated.
However, the first objection could not be dismissed so easily and quite a number of alternative structures were proposed over the ensuing years. The controversy was not really resolved until it was established that benzene is a
regular planar hexagon, which means that all of its C-C bonds have the samq
length, in best accord with a structure written not with double, not with single,
but with 1.5 bonds between the carbons, as in 13:
Exercise 1-5 Three differen1 dibrornobenzenes are kiown, here represented by just
one of the K e k u l ~stract~res,14, 15, and 16:
Show how the su3stltJtron metrlod described ir Seci~onI - I F could be usea :o determlne l ~ h i c hisomer I S which and, In addrt~oi,establ sh the structures of the varlous
poss~bletr~bromobenzenesof formula C,H,Br,
T11e "resonance theory," to be discussed in detail in Chapters 6 and 21, was charact e r i ~ e din 1949 as a physically and ideologically inadmissable theory formulated by
"decadent bourgeois 3cientists." See I,. K. Graham, Scipnce and Plzilosophy in rhe
Soviet Union, Vintage Book\, New York, 1973, Chapter VT11, for an intercsting account of this controversy.
"Modern organic chemistry should not be regarded at all as a settled science, free of
controversy. To be sure, personal attacks of the kind indulged in by Kolbe and others
often are not published, but profound and indecd acrimonious differences of scient~fic
interpretatton exist and can persist for many years.
1 lntroductlon What
IS
Assumrng the C-C bonds of the prlsm all are the same length, determ~nehow many
mono-, dl-, and trrbrom~ne-subst~tuted
Isomers are poss~blefor 17 Compare the results wlth those expected for benzene w ~ t hstructure 13 If you have molecular models
of the ball-and-strck type, these w ~ l be
l very helpful A s~mplealternative model for
17 would be a plece of strff paper folded and fastened as In 18 to glve a prlsm wrth
three equal square faces
The principle of least structural change favors 19 as the product, because the
reaction to form it is a simple replacement of bromine bonded to carbon by
-OH, whereas formation of 20 would entail a much more drastic rearrangement of bonds. The argument is really a subtle one, involving an assessment
of the reasonableness of various possible reactions. On the whole, however, it
works rather well and, in the specific case of the C,H,O isomers, is strongly
supported by the fact that treatment of 19 with strong hydrobromic acid (HBr)
converts it back to C,H,Br. In contrast, the isomer of structure 20 reacts with
HBr to form two molecules of CH,Br:
H-C-C-OH
+ HBr
H-C-C-Br
+ HzO
In each case, C-O bonds are broken and C-Br bonds are formed.
We could conceive of many other possible reactions of CzH,O with
HBr, for example
H
I I
H-C-C-OH
I I
H
+ HBr -A+
I I
Br-C-C-OH
I I
H
+ H,
which, as indicated by +, does not occur, but hardly can be ruled out by the
principle of least structural change itself. Showing how the probability of such
alternative reactions can be evaluated will be a very large part of our later
discussions.
H-C-H
In fact, as will be shown later, direct substitution of bromine for hydrogen with
compounds such as this does not occur readily, and when it does occur, the
four possible substitution products indeed are formed, but in far from equal
amounts because there are diferences in reactivity for substitution at the
different positions. Actually, some of the substitution products are formed
only in very small quantities. Fortunately, this does not destroy the validity
of the substitution method but does make it more difficult to apply. If direct
substitution fails, some (or all) of the possible substitution products may have
to be produced by indirect means. Nonetheless, you must understand that
the success of the substitution method depends on determination of the total
number of possible isomers-it does not depend on how the isomers are
prepared.
Later, you will hear a lot about compounds or reagents being "reactive"
and "unreactive." You may be exasperated by the loose way that these terms
are used by organic chemists to characterize how fast various chemical changes
occur. Many familiar inorganic reactions, such as the neutralization of hydrochloric acid with sodium hydroxide solution, are extremely fast at ordinary
temperatures. But the same is not often true of reactions of organic compounds.
For example, C,H,Br treated in two different ways is converted to gaseous
compounds, one having the formula C,H, and the other C,H4. The C2H4compound, ethene, reacts very quickly with bromine to give C,H,Br,, but the
C,H, compound, ethane, does not react with bromine except at high temperatures or when exposed to sunlight (or similar intense light). The reaction
products then are HBr and C,H,Br, and later, HBr and C,H4Br,, C,H,Br,,
and so on.
We clearly can characterize C,H, as "reactive" and C,H, as "unreactive" toward bromine. The early organic chemists also used the terms "unsaturated" and "saturated" for this behavior, and these terms are still in wide
use today. But we need to distinguish between "unsaturated" and "reactive,"
and between "saturated" and "unreactive," because these pairs of terms are
not synonymous. The equations for the reactions of ethene and ethane with
bromine are different in that ethene adds bromine, C2H4 Br, -+ C,H,Br,,
whereas ethane substitutes bromine, C2H6 Br, ---t C,H,Br
HBr.
You should reserve the term "unsaturated" for compounds that can,
at least potentially, react by addition, and "saturated7' for compounds that
can only be expected to react by substitution. The difference between addition
and substitution became much clearer with the development of the structure
theory that called for carbon to be tetravalent and hydrogen univalent. Ethene
then was assigned a structure with a carbon-to-carbon double bond, and ethane
a structure with a carbon-to-carbon single bond:
ethene
ethane
CGC,
a
H-C-C-H
1
1
We will see later that the way in which these reactions actually occur
is much more complicated than these simple equations indicate. In fact, such
equations are regarded best as chemical accounting operations. The number of
bonds is shown correctly for both the reactants and the products, and there
is an indication of which bonds break and which bonds are formed in the overall
process. However, do not make the mistake of assuming that no other bonds
are broken or made in intermediate stages of the reaction.
Much of what comes later in this book will be concerned with what we
know, or can find out, about the mechanisms of such reactions-a reaction
mechanism being the actual sequence of events by which the reactants become converted to the products. Such information is of extraordinary value
in defining and understanding the range of applicability of given reactions for
practical preparations of desired compounds.
The distinction we have made between "unsaturated" and "reactive" is
best illustrated by a definite example. Ethene is "unsaturated" (and "reactive")
toward bromine, but tetrachloroethene, C2C1,, will not add bromine at all under the same conditions and is clearly "unreactive." But is it also "saturated"?
C1
7'+
?="\C
C1
C1 CI
I
I
Br, ++ CI-C-C-CI
Br
I
I
Br
tetrachloroethene
Obviously, tetrachloroethene is "unsaturated" in the sense it can undergo addition, even if it is unreactive to bromine in the absence of aluminum bromide.
The aluminum bromide functions in the addition of bromine to tetrachloroethene as a catalyst, which is something that facilitates the conversion
of reactants to products. The study of the nature and uses of catalysts will
concern us throughout this book. Catalysis is our principal means of controlling organic reactions to help form the product we want in the shortest possible time.
17
that you already will have had experience with simple inorganic compounds.
That you will know, for example, that elemental bromine is Br, and a noxious,
dark red-brown, corrosive liquid; that sulfuric acid is H,SO,, a syrupy colorless liquid that reacts with water with the evolution of considerable heat and
is a strong acid; that sodium hydroxide is NaOH, a colorless solid that dissolves in water to give a strongly alkaline solution. It is important to know
the characteristics of acids and bases, how to write simple, balanced chemical
Na,SO,
reactions, such as 2H2 0, -+ 2H20, and 2NaOH H,SO,
2H,O, what the concept of a mole of a chemical substance is, and to be
somewhat familiar with the periodic table of the elements as well as with the
metric system, at least insofar as grams, liters, and degrees centigrade are
concerned. Among other things, you also should understand the basic ideas of
the differences between salts and covalent compounds, as well as between
gases, liquids, and solids; what a solution is; the laws of conservation of mass
and energy; the elements of how to derive the Lewis electron structures of
simple molecules such as H :0 :H =water; that P V = nR T; and how to calculate
molecular formulas from percentage compositions and molecular weights. We
shall use no mathematics more advanced than simple algebra but we do cxpect that you can use logarithms and are able to carry through the following
conversions forward and backward:
The above is an incomplete list, given to illustrate the level of preparation we are presuming in this text. If you find very much of this list partly or
wholly unfamiliar, you don't have to give up, but have a good general chemistry
textbook available for study and reference-and use it! Some useful general
chemistry books are listed at the end of the chapter. A four-place table of
logarithms will be necessary; a set of ball-and-stick models and a chemical
handbook will be very helpful, as would be a small electronic calculator or
slide rule to carry out the simple arithmetic required for many of the exercises.
In the next section, we review some general chemistry regarding saltlike and covalent compounds that will be of special relevance to our later
discussions.
d~amondlattice
graphite
( 0 carbon atom)
But carbon is not unique in forming bonds to itself because other elements
such as boron, silicon, and phosphorus form strong bonds in the elementary
state. The uniqueness of carbon stems more from the fact that it forms strong
carbon-carbon bonds that also are strong when in combination with other elements. For example, the combination of hydrogen with carbon affords a remarkable variety of carbon hydrides, or hydrocarbons as they usually are
called. In contrast, none of the other second-row elements except boron gives
a very extensive system of stable hydrides, and most of the boron hydrides
are much more reactive than hydrocarbons, especially to water and air.
H
I
H-C-H
I
I I
H-C-C-H
I I
methane
ethane
(typical hydrocarbons)
/"="\
H
H
ethene
Carbon forms bonds not only with itself and with hydrogen but also
with many other elements, including strongly electron-attracting elements
such as fluorine and strongly electropositive metals such as lithium:
F-C-F
tetrafluoromethane
(carbon tetrafluorlde)
H-C-F
methyl fluoride
H-C-~i
methyllithium
Why is carbon so versatile in its ability to bond to very different kinds of elements? The special properties of carbon can be attributed to its being a
relatively small atom with four valence electrons. To form simple saltlike
compounds such as sodium chloride, NaBC1@,carbon would have to either
lose the four valence electrons to an element such as fluorine and be converted to a quadripositive ion, C4@,or acquire four electrons from an element
such as lithium and form a quadrinegative ion, C40. Gain of four electrons
would be energetically very unfavorable because of mutual repulsion between
the electrons.
19
Customarily, carbon completes its valence-shell octet by sharing electrons with other atoms. In compounds with shared electron bonds (or covalent
bonds) such as methane, ethane, or tetrafluoromethane, each of the bonded
atoms including carbon has its valence shell filled, as shown in the following
electron-pair or Lewis6 structures:
H
H:C
.. : H
H
H
.. H
..
H:C
..: C..: H
H H
methane
ethane
.. :F:
.. ..
: ..
F : c..: F..:
: F:
..
tetrafluoromethane
SO SO
c:
:F
Li
We see then a gradation from purely ionic to purely covalent bonding in different molecules, and this is manifest in their chemical and physical properties.
Consider, for instance, the hydrides of the elements in the second horizontal
row of the periodic table. Their melting and boiling point^,^ where known, are
given below.
LiH
BeH,
rnp,"C
680
(decomposes at 125)
bp, "C
BH,
CH,
NH,
H,O
HF
-182
-161
-78
-33
0
100
-83.7
+19.7
0 0
so so
so ..so
lithium hydride, and H j : F : for hydrogen fluoride so that the electron pair
goes with the atom of highest electron affinity. This is indeed the case as the
following reaction indicates:
Methane, with its relatively nonpolar bonds, is inert to almost all reagents that could remove hydrogen as H @or H : @exceptunder anything but
extreme conditions. As would be expected, methyl cations CH,@and methyl
anions CH, :Oare very difficult to generate and are extremely reactive. For this
reason, the following reactions are not observed:
From the foregoing you may anticipate that the chemistry of carbon
compounds will be largely the chemistry of covalent compounds and will not
at all resemble the chemistry of inorganic salts such as sodium chloride. You
also may anticipate that the major differences in chemical and physical properties of organic compounds will arise from the nature of the other elements
bonded to carbon. Thus methane is not expected to, nor does it have, the same
chemistry as other one-carbon compounds such as methyllithium, CH,Li,
or methyl fluoride, CH,F.
Exercise 1-9 Lithium hydride could be written as either Li@:Hoor Ha: LiG depending on whether lithium or hydrogen is more electron-attracting. Explain why hydrogen
is actually more electron-attracting, making the correct structure Lia: HO
Exercise '1-10 An acid (HA) can be defined as a substance that donates a proton
to a base, for example water. The proton-donation reaction usually is an equilibrium
reaction and is written as
Predict which member of each of the following pairs of compounds would be the
stronger acid. Give your reasons.
a. LiH, HF
c. H20,, H 2 0
b. NH,, H 2 0
d. CH,, CF,H
22
1 lntroductlon What
IS
Each of us and every other living organism is comprised of, and endlessly manufactures, organic compounds. Further, all organisms consume
organic compounds as raw materials, except for those plants that use photosynthesis or related processes to synthesize their own from carbon dioxide.
To understand every important aspect of this chemistry, be it the details of
photosynthesis, digestion, reproduction, muscle action, memory or even the
thought process itself, is a primary goal of science and it should be recognized
that only through application of organic chemistry will this goal be achieved.
Modern civilization consumes vast quantities of organic compounds.
Coal, petroleum, and natural gas are primary sources of carbon compounds
for use in production of energy and as starting materials for the preparation
of plastics, synthetic fibers, dyes, agricultural chemicals, pesticides, fertilizers,
detergents, rubbers and other elastomers, paints and other surface coatings,
medicines and drugs, perfumes and flavors, antioxidants and other preservatives, as well as asphalts, lubricants, and solvents that are derived from petroleum.
Much has been done and you soon may infer from the breadth of the
material that we will cover that most everything worth doing already has been
done. However, many unsolved scientific problems remain and others have not
even been thought of but, in addition, there are many technical and social problems to which answers are badly needed. Some of these include problems of
pollution of the environment, energy sources, overpopulation and food production, insect control, medicine, drug action, and improved utilization of
natural resources.
A useful method for developing this sort of feeling for the relationship between
structures and actual compounds is to check your perception of particular
substances with their properties as given in a chemical handbook.
One, perhaps comforting, thought for you at this time is that differences
between the chemical behaviors of relative]y similar organic compounds usually
are ascribed to just three important and different kinds of effects- two of which
have root in common experience. One, called steric hindrance, is a manifestation of experience that two solid objects cannot occupy the same space at
once. Another is the electrical effect, which boils down to a familiar catechism that like electrical charges repel each other and unlike charges attract
each other. The remaining important effect, the one that has no basis in common experience, derives from quantum mechanics. The quantum mechanical
effect explains why benzene is unusually stable, how and why many reactions
occur in special ways and, probably most important of all, the ways that organic compounds interact with electromagnetic radiation of all kinds -from
radio waves to x rays.
We shall try to give as clear explanations as possible of the quantum
mechanical effect, but some of it will just have to be accepted as fact that we
cannot ourselves experience directly nor understand intuitively. For example,
when a grindstone rotates, so far as our experience goes, it can have an infinitely variable rate of rotation and, consequently, infinitely variable rotational (angular) momentum. However, molecules in the gas phase have only
specijic rotation rates and corresponding specijic rotational momentum values.
No measurement technique can detect in-between values of these quantities.
Molecules are "quantized rotators." About all you can do is try to accept
this fact, and if you try long enough, you may be able to substitute familiarity
for understanding and be happy with that.
All of us have some concepts we use continually (even perhaps unconsciously) about energy and work. Thermodynamics makes these concepts
quantitative and provides very useful information about what might be called
the potential for any process to occur, be it production of electricity from a
battery, water running uphill, photosynthesis, or formation of nitrogen oxides
in combustion of gasoline. In the past, most organic chemists seldom tried to
apply thermodynamics to the reactions in which they were interested. Much
of this was due to the paucity of thermodynamic data for more than a few
organic compounds, but some was because organic chemists often liked to
think of themselves as artistic types with little use for quantitative data on
their reactions (which may have meant that they didn't really know about
thermodynamics and were afraid to ask).
24
Additional Reading
Useful general chemistry textbooks:
R. E. Dickerson, H. B. Gray, and G. P. Haight, Jr., Chemical Principles, 2nd ed., W. A
Benjamin, Inc., Menlo Park, Calif., 1974.
Additional Read~ng
M. J, Sienko and R. A Plane, Chemical Principles and Properties, 2nd ed., McGrawHill Book Company, New York, 1974.
L. Pauling, General Chemistry, 3rd ed., W. H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco,
1970.
B. H. Mahan, University Chemistry, 2nd ed., Addison-Wesley Publishing Company,
Reading, Mass., 1969,
G. C. Pimentel and R. 0 . Spratley, Understanding Chemistry, Holden-Day, Inc., San
Francisco, 1971.
R. H. Eastman, General Chemistry, Experiment and Theory, Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
New York, 1970.
W. L. Masterton and E, J. Slowinski, Chemical Principles, 3rd ed., W. B. Saunders
Company, Philadelphia, 1973,
Supplementary Exercises
~
. .
...'
, s~<,n-,a.a"%~*bwP&,:~*~w
~ ~ ~ u , , , L ~~ ~ ~~ ~~ . ~. =. > ~~ -, r ~. ~~ A *~ ~
~ \W%,<U*
~ t ~ k, ~~ ~ ~~ ."~-~ ~
> ~~ ~ ~~ *, w~ ~ k
% ~
w~
1-11 (This problem is in the nature of review of elementary inorganic chemistry and
may require reference to a general chemistry book.) Write Lewis structures for each
of the following compounds. Use distinct, correctly placed dots for the electrons.
Mark all atoms that are not neutral with charges of the proper sign.
a. ammonia, NH,
f. hydrogen peroxide, HOOH
b. ammonium bromide, NH,Br
g. hydroxylamine, HONH,
c. hydrogen cyanide, HCN
h. nitric acid, HNO,
d. ozone ( L 0-0-0
= 120')
i. hydrogen sulfide, H,S
e. carbon dioxide, CO,
j. boron trifluoride, BF,
1-12 Use ball-and-stick models or suitable three-dimensional drawings to determine
which members of the following sets of formulas represent identical compounds,
provided "free rotation" is considered to be possible around all single bonds (except
when these bonds are present in a cyclic structure):
CI
CI
I I
H-C-C-H
I I
CI
I I
H-C-C-CI
I I
26
b.
I A
I
l
H-C-C-C-H
I
H-C-H
H-c-H
H-C-H
H-C-C-C-H
H
I 1 8
I
I
H-C-C---C-OH
I
I
H-C-H
T I
H-C-C-OH
H-C-C-H
H-C-H
1-13 Write structures for all of the different monobromo substitution products (of
apBr for H) you would expect for each of the following compounds, (Where CH,H
I
I
b.
CI
I I
H-C-C-H
I I
Supplementary Exerc~ses
C.
CH3
I
CH3-C-CH3
I
d.
CH3
I
I
CHS-C-CH3
CH3
f.
\>'
\c/ \c/
CH
CH,
/ \C/
\H
H
H/ \H
1-14 There are two isomers of C3H6 with normal carbon and hydrogen valences.
Each adds bromine-one rapidly and the other very sluggishly -to give different
isomers of C3H6Br,. The C3H,Br2 derived from the C3H6isomer that reacts sluggishly
with bromine can give just two different C3H,Br3 isomers on further bromine substitution, whereas the other C3H6Br2compound can give three different C3H,Br3 isomers
on further substitution. What are the structures of the C3H6isomers and their C3H6Br,
addition products?
1-15* (Remember that here and elsewhere, * denotes a more difficult exercise.)
The vast majority of organic substances are compounds of carbon with hydrogen,
oxygen, nitrogen, or the halogens. Carbon and hydrogen can be determined in combustible compounds by burning a weighed sample in a stream of oxygen (Figure 1-1)
and absorbing the resulting water and carbon dioxide in tubes containing anhydrous
magnesium perchlorate and soda lime, respectively. The gain in weight of these
tubes corresponds to the weights of the water and the carbon dioxide formed.
The molecular weight of a moderately volatile substance can be determined
by the historically important Victor Meyer procedure, by which the volume of gas
produced by vaporization of a weighed sample of an unknown is measured at a given
sample in
platinum boat
0 2
/CuO
p K q /
pellets
9.
-g
P'
-3 m A A w. r J
- . & S E E ? ?
~lLb<a,d
,, .p
Mg(CIO,),
4 excess
,.e
%
@ u
js
soda lime
Figure 1-1 Schematic representation of a combustion train for determination of carbon and hydrogen in combustible substances
oven at
temperature i,
gas burette at
temperature 7,
arr
+ vapor
broken
Figure 1-2 Schematic diagram of a Victor Meyer apparatus for determination of the vapor dens~tyof a substance that is volatile at the oven
temperature T,. The air displaced from the heated chamber by the volatilization of the sample in the bulb is measured in the gas burette at temperature T2 as the difference in the burette readings V2 and V,.
temperature (Figure 1-2). The relationship PV = nRT is used here, in which P is the
pressure in mm of mercury, V is the volume in ml, T is the absolute temperature in OK
[= 273.15 T("C)], n is the number of moles, and R is the gas constant = 62,400 in
units of (mm Hg x ml)/(moles x OK). The number of moles, n, equals rnlM in which rn
is the weight of the sample and M is the gross molecular weight. An example of the
use of the Victor Meyer method follows.
A 0.005372-g sample of a liquid carbon-hydrogen-oxygen compound on combustion gave 0.01222 g of CO, and 0.00499 g of H,O. In the Victor Meyer method,
0.0343 g of the compound expelled a quantity of air at 100" (373K) which, when collected at 27" (300K) and 728 mm Hg, amounted to 15.2 ml.
Show how these results lead to the empirical and molecular formula of C,H,O.
Write at least five isomers that correspond to this formula with univalent H, divalent 0,
and tetravalent C.
Supplementary Exercises
29